Quotes

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Quotes: If Wolverine Can Weep at a Movie

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In honor of the movie Deadpool & Wolverine coming out next week, here’s a lovely tidbit concerning an earlier Wolverine movie. Sir Patrick Stewart apparently had the following to say on seeing Logan for the first time with an audience at the Berlin Film Festival in 2017:

“It was Hugh [Jackman] and [director] James Mangold and myself, and when it got to the last 10 minutes of the movie, it was emotional and intense, and I could feel myself getting choked up. Then I looked over at Hugh and he was wiping his eyes, and I thought if Wolverine can weep at a movie, Charles Xavier can do the same thing. Then Hugh reached over and grabbed my hand and we held hands for the rest of the movie.”

-Sir Patrick Stewart

HUGE props for Hugh Jackman and Sir Patrick—it’s not always easy being a man and showing emotion in the Anglo-American world, never mind when you’re supposedly this tragic tougher-than-nails superhero. (Sorry, sorry, bad pun very much intended!)

IMDB Logan Stewart and Jackman

(I do appreciate Sir Patrick so much—he’s such a humane and decent man, not to mention a superb actor!)

Lang, Brent. “Patrick Stewart on ‘Logan,’ Harvey Weinstein and Returning to ‘Star Trek’.” Variety, December 05, 2017.

Image via IMDB

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Quotes: Gwladys or Ysobel or Ethyl

Erik

Complaining about “kids these days” with strangely-spelled names is a well that never runs dry. It’s also an older habit than many who indulge in it would think. Here’s a bit from a 1930 P. G. Wodehouse story where Bertie Wooster’s Aunt Dahlia chides him for falling in love with a young lady with an eccentrically-spelled name.

‘Yes, Aunt Dahlia,’ I said, ‘you have guessed my secret. I do indeed love.’

‘Who is she?’

‘A Miss Pendlebury. Christian name, Gwladys. She spells it with a “w”.’

‘With a “g”, you mean.’

‘With a “w” and a “g”.’

‘Not Gwladys?’

‘That’s it.’

The relative uttered a yowl.

‘You sit there and tell me you haven’t enough sense to steer clear of a girl who calls herself Gwladys? Listen Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia earnestly, ‘I’m an older woman than you are – well, you know what I mean – and I can tell you a thing or two. And one of them is that no good can come of association with anything labelled Gwladys or Ysobel or Ethyl or Mabelle or Kathryn. But particularly Gwladys.’




P. G. Wodehouse, “The Spot of Art”

The next time someone gets in a snit about Kaytlynn, Jaxson, or Alexzandre, you can let them know they’re part of a tradition at least a century old.

Wodehouse, P. G. “The Spot of Art.” Very Good, Jeeves. First published 1930. Reprinted in The Jeeves Omnibus. Vol. 3. London: Hutchinson, 1991, p. 460.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Quotes: Her Backstory Unfolded Pretty Much as I Typed It

Eppu

In the acknowledgements for her novella Thornhedge, author T. Kingfisher talks a little about the process of writing this particular story.

“Many characters bolt off with the story, and I am left staggering behind them, frantically trying to take notes, but Toadling was very polite. Her backstory unfolded pretty much as I typed it. I learned she was raised by greenteeth as I wrote the sentence about them; I learned that she could turn into a toad when she did it on the page—all the little discoveries that you always make writing a book, of course, but happening at my usual typing speed, without sitting and staring at the wall for an hour, or nearly rupturing my wrist tendons trying to keep up.”

–T. Kingfisher in the acknowledgements for Thornhedge
Kingfisher Thornhedge

I’m not a fiction writer, but I do recognize the phenomenon of suddenly uncovering details from role-playing. It’s delightful to just suddenly realize a pertinent, obscure, or particularly distinguishing detail about your character.

(This kind of serendipitous discovery also makes me think any algorithmically generated (“AI”) content won’t be replacing the most original types of human-generated content terribly soon, nor will machine translation replace human translators in a hurry. Oh, make no mistake, people will try to replace human creators with machines. But at least thus far we’re still more sophisticated when it comes to pure innovative leaps or getting smoother translations.)

There have been many times I’ve wished to be able to tap into the unconscious mulling process or consciously force a creative leap, but of course it doesn’t work that way. It makes the moments when it does happen all the more precious, doesn’t it? 🙂

Kingfisher, T. Thornhedge. London: Titan Books, 2023, p. 122.

Image by Eppu Jensen

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Quotes: Women Have Also Painted

Erik

The ancient Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder wrote a good deal about painting. His interest stemmed from curiosity about which plants and minerals were used to make make pigments, but he also recorded the names of famous artists and some details about their paintings.

Unlike the stretched canvases we are used to today, ancient painters worked on wooden panels, of which extremely few survive, or on plastered walls, a few of which have survived in places like Pompeii and Dura-Europus. Most of the famous painters of antiquity were men, but Pliny makes sure to note that women also took up the brush.

Women have also painted. Timarete, daughter of Micon, created the very old panel painting of Artemis of Ephesus. Irene, daughter and student of the painter Cratinus, painted an Eleusinian maiden, Calypso, Theodorus the juggler, and Alcisthenes the dancer. Aristarete, daughter and student of Nearchus, painted Aesculapius. Iaia of Cyzicus, who was a lifelong virgin, painted and engraved ivory at Rome during the youth of Marcus Varro [late second century BCE]. She mostly made images of women, including a large panel painting of an old woman at Naples, as well as a self-portrait made using a mirror. Nobody had a faster hand for painting than she did, and in fact she was so accomplished an artist that the prices for her works far exceeded those commanded by Sopolis and Dionysius, who were the most celebrated portrait painters of the time and whose paintings fill the galleries. A certain Olympias was also a painter, but all that is recorded about her is that Autobulus was her student.


Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.147-48 (=35.40)

(My own translation)

Women created famous works, were paid well for their craft, and taught others. It is unsurprising that some of these women were daughters of well-known male painters, since art was often a family business in the ancient Mediterranean.

Wooden panel paintings were among the most highly-prized forms of art in ancient Greece and Rome. Thanks to writers like Pliny, we know more about the famous painters of antiquity and their paintings than we would ever know from the few examples that survive today. It is good to have evidence that women, too, took part in this prestigious art form.

Image: Women preparing for a ritual, cropped from a photograph by WolfgangRieger via Wikimedia (Pompeii, Villa of the Mysteries; 1st c. BCE; fresco)

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Quotes: He Lay on top of Me Like an Enormous Stone

Erik1 Comment

Saint Patrick’s Day is coming, and while some folk will be out there marching in parades or drinking green beer, I am reminded that Patrick is the source of one of the clearest early accounts of sleep paralysis and the frightening sensations that can come with it.

Patrick wrote an account of his life, called the Confession. This document was written late in his life and in response to some unknown allegations of misconduct during his mission in Ireland. Patrick’s Confession accordingly focuses on his humility and spiritual piety as it tells the story of how he was enslaved in Ireland as a young man, escaped to Britain, and finally returned to spread the Christian message. At one point in narrating his escape, Patrick recounts a frightening nighttime experience which he perceived as a demonic attack:

On that very night as I was sleeping, Satan tested me powerfully, such that I shall remember it for as long as I am in this body. He lay on top of me like an enormous stone, and I had no strength in any of my limbs. How did it occur to me, ignorant in spirit, to cry out “Elias?” In the midst of this, I saw the sun begin to rise in the sky, and as I shouted “Elias! Elias!” with all my strength, behold, the splendor of the sun fell over me and at once all the weight left me.

Saint Patrick, Confession 20

(My own translation)

Sleep paralysis is a frightening experience that happens when the brain’s processes for falling asleep or waking up are not quite in sync. In normal sleep, the body becomes paralyzed at the same time the brain becomes unconscious, and both states pass when we wake up. Sleep paralysis happens when the body is paralyzed but the brain is partially aware of its surroundings. Unable to properly process stimuli, the brain fills in the gaps with hallucinations. Because the brain is aware of the body’s vulnerability in its paralyzed state, these hallucinations often feel threatening. It is not unusual for a sufferer to scream themselves awake in response. Sleep paralysis most often happens in the evening when first going to sleep or in the early morning while waking up.

Many cultures have folk traditions that interpret sleep paralysis as the effect of hostile supernatural visitation. Old-fashioned explanations include incubi, night hags, and ghosts; more modern folktales may feature alien abduction. Patrick details a clear account of sleep paralysis—it happens at dawn, he is unable to move, he feels a weight on his body and perceives a hostile presence which he shouts away—but interprets the events in a specifically Christian context.

Patrick’s night terrors are a reminder of both the universality of human experiences, and how powerfully our own specific cultural outlook can shape our reactions to those experiences.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Quotes: And Then It Leaves You Alone

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The Finnish Independence Day is tomorrow, on December 6. In honor of a day of rest, here’s a quote celebrating the most important things in life for this Finn—food, clothes, books, and tea:

Current Reading Babel

“Professor Lovell spoke with uncharacteristic warmth. ‘It’s the loveliest place on earth.’

“He spread his hands through the air, as if envisioning Oxford before him. ‘Imagine a town of scholars, all researching the most marvellous, fascinating things. Science. Mathematics. Languages. Literature. Imagine building after building filled with more books than you’ve seen in your entire life. Imagine quiet, solitude, and a serene place to think.’ He sighed. ‘London is a blathering mess. It’s impossible to get anything done here; the city’s too loud, and it demands too much of you. You can escape out to places like Hampstead, but the screaming core draws you back in whether you like it or not. But Oxford gives you all the tools you need for your work – food, clothes, books, tea – and then it leaves you alone.’”

– Professor Lovell in Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

Well—cold-sensitive, erudite, reclusive Finn or not, I do have to add a few carefully selected people into that mix. But otherwise it sounds very good. 🙂

Kuang, R.F. Babel: An Arcane History. New York: Harper Voyager, 2022, p. 23.

Image by Eppu Jensen

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Ghosts of Marathon

Erik

Tales of haunted places are a nearly universal part of human experience. Ghost stories can be one of the ways in which we remember the past, especially traumatic or painful parts of it. Even in ancient Greece there were legends of hauntings connected with the site of the battle of Marathon.

Normally, in ancient Greece, the bodies of fallen soldiers were brought back to their home city after the battle and buried wherever their families buried their dead, but an exception was made for the fallen of Marathon in recognition of the exceptional nature of the battle. The dead of Marathon were buried on the site of the battle and an enormous earthen mound raised over their tomb.

The travel writer Pausanias reported local legends about ghostly apparitions around the tomb mound some six centuries after the event (and a warning to any would-be ghost hunters):

Every night there can be heard the sound of horses neighing and men fighting. It has never done anyone any good to go looking for these manifestations on purpose, but those who happen upon the scene by chance do not suffer the spirits’ wrath.


Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.32.4

(My own translation)

If you’re enjoying some ghost stories this Halloween, know that you’re in good company and part of a long tradition.

History for Writers looks at how history can be a fiction writer’s most useful tool, from worldbuilding to dialogue.

Quotes: The Roman Custom When Clearing a Stand of Trees

Erik

At least since Tolkien’s Ents smashed up Isengard, the idea of resurgent nature rebelling against those who would destroy it has been a theme in modern fantasy. The idea seems to be a product of modern industrialization and environmentalism. There is no comparable trope in the literature of the ancient Mediterranean, but the idea that humans exist in a relationship with nature that must be properly observed and maintained does find echoes there. The early Roman writer and politician Cato the Elder included this advice in his handbook on farming for those who wanted to cut down trees to clear land:

This is the Roman custom when clearing a stand of trees. With the sacrifice of a pig, use these words: “Whether you are a god or a goddess to whom this wood is sacred, since it is fitting for you to receive the sacrifice of a pig for the clearing of this wood, therefore for these reasons, whether I do it myself or someone does it at my command, let it be correctly done. Therefore with the burnt offering of this pig I pray the correct prayers, so that you may look kindly on me, my family, my household, and my children. For these reasons, therefore, may the burnt offering of this pig be worshipfully made.”

If you wish to plow the ground, make another sacrifice in the same way, adding the words: “for the purpose of doing this work.” As long as the work is ongoing, the same ritual must be done every day in some part of the land. If you miss a day, or if public or family celebrations interrupt the work, you must perform an additional sacrifice.


Cato the Elder, On Agriculture 139-40

(My own translation)

Cato does not elaborate on what might befall a farmer who failed to perform the correct ceremonies. Given what we know of Roman religion, it is more likely that bad luck or a poor harvest was the feared consequence, not angry spirits coming out of the woods to wreak havoc. Still, the idea that interfering with nature is something to be done carefully and with a good purpose is an ancient one.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Quotes: Bottles Rattling with Explosive Sneezes

Eppu

I gather that Becky Chambers’s new Monk & Robot series has gotten a mixed reception. Broadly speaking people either love it or are frustrated by it. Since I love Chambers’s Wayfarers series, I thought I’d check the new series out.

Current Reading A Psalm for the Wild-Built

I’m still not yet sure what, exactly, to think except to say I see why the dichotomy has arisen. Here’s one section that I found simply mind-boggling:

“The wagon’s lower deck quickly lost any semblance of organization, evolving rapid-fire into a hodgepodge laboratory. Planters and sunlamps filled every conceivable nook, their leaves and shoots constantly pushing the limits of how far their steward would let them creep. Stacks of used mugs containing the dregs of experiments both promising and pointless teetered on the table, awaiting the moment in which Dex had the brainspace to do the washing-up. A hanging rack took up residence on the ceiling and wasted no time in becoming laden to capacity with bundles of confettied flowers and fragrant leaves drying crisp. A fine dust of ground spices coated everything from the couch to the ladder to the inside of Dex’s nostrils, which regularly set bottles rattling with explosive sneezes.”

– Becky Chambers: A Psalm for the Wild-Built

The section starts quite well, and I see why the word cozy is applied to the series. Then, sadly, it gets worse. I don’t even terribly mind the mess in a food-prep space (dirty dishes to the ceiling and a coating of dust), as it could conceivably be just eccentric. (I mean, I prefer a clean home myself since I’m allergic to dust, and plant dust doesn’t help, but to each their own.)

But. Dex is “regularly” sneezing “explosive[ly]” all over the space where they mix the teas they’re offering to people they serve as a tea-monk.

Excuse me? SNEEZING—REGULARLY—ON DRINKS THEY SERVE TO OTHERS?!?

Disgusting is an understatement! The exact opposite to cozy. Ew! Ew, ew, ew, eww!

I do get that getting a book to print takes a good long while (a highly technical term, that). I wasn’t able to find out when Chambers started to write A Psalm for the Wild-Built, but the publishing deal was announced in July 2018 and the first book published in July 2021. In the acknowledgments for the sequel, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, she writes that she finished book 1 “just before lock-down started” and handed in book 2 “three months before I was eligible for my first [covid vaccination] jab”. It is therefore possible that it was not feasible to change the text.

Still, I should think that it’s not too much of a stretch to NOT SNEEZE ON FOODS AND DRINKS. In real life or in fiction. With or without a pandemic behind you (i.e., having been filled to the gills with information about cough etiquette and sneezing hygiene).

EWWWWWWWWW!!!

Chambers, Becky. A Psalm for the Wild-Built. New York: Tordotcom, 2021, p. 22-23.

Image by Eppu Jensen

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.

Quotes: By Her Efforts She Learned Writing

Erik

The lives of women in history are so often invisible to us that we become accustomed to not seeing them. Sometimes even when we do see them, we don’t always realize what we’re seeing. The ancient Greek antiquarian Plutarch certainly didn’t know what he was seeing when he quoted this poem (probably composed to be inscribed on the base of a statue) by the Macedonian queen Eurydice.

Eurydice, daughter of Sirra, dedicated this to the local

Muses when she had seized her soul’s desire.

For as a mother of young men, by her efforts

she learned writing, the record of knowledge.


– Eurydice, quoted in Plutarch Moralia 1.20 (=14a-b)

(My own translation)

Plutarch praises Eurydice for learning to read in order to help educate her sons (all of whom went on to become kings of Macedon, one of them the father of Alexander the Great). But although Eurydice does mention her sons, there is much more to this poem.

Eurydice identifies herself in relation to her mother, Sirra, not her father or husband, as would have been typical in ancient Macedon. She directs her praise to the Muses, nine female divine figures, not to Hermes, Apollo, or another male deity equally connected with learning and writing. She does mention her sons, but as an attribute of herself: she does not say (as Plutarch assumed) that she learned in order to teach them, but rather positions her achievement of learning as noteworthy for someone who has undergone the rigors of childbirth and is old enough to have sons on the cusp of adulthood. Eurydice describes her learning in a context that is defined by women and women’s experiences, not men.

While Eurydice makes her accomplishment a feminine one, she uses typically masculine language to describe it. Her language in the original Greek is active, even aggressive. When she says that she accomplished her goal, she uses the same word that other writers used to describe an army capturing a city; when she speaks of her efforts to learn, her words echo those used to describe men training for battle. She positions her learning as the work of a woman surrounded by women, both human and divine, but equal to the work of the male warrior kings in her family.

Eurydice was proud of her learning, as she had every right to be. Literacy was a rare skill in antiquity, and to have learned by her own efforts as an adult shows intelligence and determination. She was doing far more than setting a good example for her sons.

Like Plutarch, traditional history is accustomed to seeing women only in the background of men’s lives, but the records of women’s lives are still there, some of them speaking directly to us if we are just prepared to listen. Many more women like Eurydice have left a “record of knowledge” for us to learn from.

Serving exactly what it sounds like, the Quotes feature excerpts other people’s thoughts.